Located in countries around the world, the co.space homes are co-living environments that will connect the most driven and passionate university students with young professionals and experienced mentors within the social innovation field. Each of these homes will be linked together through cutting-edge video and collaboration technology that will allow innovators, entrepreneurs, and consultants to remain in constant communication and collaborate on projects together through life-size video screens in the home. Winning the GOOD Maker challenge will increase our publicity about the program allowing more partners to join the project which will help grow the network of co.space homes supporting changemaking endeavors.

During our AshokaU Professional Changemaker Workshop, few attendees knew anything about the range of well-paying careers they can explore to do well by doing good. If highly motivated students don’t know what’s out there, how can they compete for these well-paying jobs in CSR, sustainable business, and social enterprise? To address this, we have spent the last 60 days developing 12 on demand modules students and young professionals can use to get clear, get connected and get hired for internships and jobs that honor their values and leverage their education. We will now roll out these modules to campuses and individuals to help changemakers do well by doing good. Demo at http://ow.ly/abXZH

We plan to first create impact on our campus, Bentley University, by becoming a Dell Social Innovation Partner. This will raise awareness of social entrepreneurship and it's importance in the business world. Next, we have plans of developing an internship program that provides students with the incentive of a trip to Ghana. This program will evoke empathy and make the interns passionate about the Bead Project and Social Entrepreneurship. We also plan on providing a micro-loan to an organization of 65 women in Ghana. We currently have $26,000 in our education fund that will not be of use for a couple of years. Rather than earn 1% interest in the bank, we will loan 8% of our fund at a 5% interest rate to the Women’s Development Program.

USD’s E-Waste Collection Center offers the community a safe, secure and socially responsible way to dispose of the e-waste that has been collecting in homes and offices. We are open to the entire community, where anyone can drop off unwanted electronics to be recycled. Being the first university to implement such a program, we have already had an overwhelming amount of success, but this has only opened our eyes to how much more can be done to offset the growing problem of e-waste. By purchasing a truck, we could expand our operation to include e-waste events with local schools and businesses and be able to start an e-waste pick-up service to collect items in the community from people who are unable to bring in their e-waste to the Center.

At AshokaU we were able to personally meet and speak with dozens of students and faculty members from 26 universities in the U.S. and Canada who were interested in taking the TABLE FOR TWO program to their respective campuses. It has only been a month, but already we have: - 6 campuses that have launched TFT programs in their cafeterias and kiosks, with at least 3 more launching in April - students in at least 40 universities across North America actively engaged in TFT We also met the organizer of TEDxUCIrvine at AshokaU, and had a successful collaboration in early March (see picture). We are now looking at a larger-scale collaboration with TEDx (and eventually, TED). Stay tuned for more updates!

We propose to use the entire university--students, staff, faculty, alumni, donors, educational mandates, revenue streams, international programs -- to help scale what works in global development, building on the best ideas of social entrepreneurs. We aim to link Andean and East African social entrepreneurs (SE), NGOs, businesses, and universities through regional Exchanges, and use expert-guidance (academic specialists) and crowdsourcing (using the abundant student ideas). We will adapt the SE curriculum to cultivate Social Intrapraneurs to change global development agencies from within. Next steps are to plan for the first Andean Exchange, bringing East African social entrepreneurs (and others) to Lima in 2013~!

Put simply this years Ashoka U Exchange was awesome. It was invigorating to be around close friends, inspiring students, budding entrepreneurs and future collaborators. The ThinkImpact team is now more committed than ever to creating the greatest program in the world, the 2012 Innovation Institute. For eight weeks this summer 144 of our Innovation Institute scholars will work side by side with community partners in rural Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and South Africa. Together they will build and prototype innovative solutions that will solve community challenges and change lives. We invite the Exchange community to join us as we close our final round of recruitment on April 16. Visit our "Allies" page and spread the good word. http://bit.ly/q

We have already made real progress! 1) Key partners have signed on: a) Ashoka, b) the Kellogg Leadership Alliance, c) the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal, d) I-LEAD, Inc. The program has been developed in iTunes and we have completed 4 interviews with Ashoka Fellows on the theme of empathy. Through this challenge we seek additional organizations to produce and promote the podcast and to use the interviews in social entrepreneurship education. We want to create an advisory board composed of Ashoka U partners. Here are some sites (under construction) http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/innovate-podcast/id507656119 http://www.facebook.com/InnovatePodcast We are not promoting these yet but feel free to subscribe and like the pages!

Cultivate partnerships between urban agriculture pioneers and exemplars of best practices (e.g., Sweetwater Organics) and communities with demonstrated need and capacity for aquaponics systems. Build sustainable social ventures to develop supply chains linking individual aquaponics systems and technology assistance aiding system managers. As a first step, we have created a specialized new venture incubator specifically designed for companies who want to enter the urban agriculture space. The incubator, specifically aimed at student collaborations, provides business model advice, links to suppliers, partners, and customers, and provides guidance for participating in developing markets in urban centers around the globe.

We will bring academics and practitioners to campus for lectures and workshops to share best practices. These will include Haverford alumni Ashoka fellows, faculty and students from peer institutions engaged in social entrepreneurship, and Ashoka staff. This event will generate a core group of students who identify as social entrepreneurs, as well as an entrepreneur-in-residence program in spring 2013. This symposium will also engage our new presidential leadership to identify social entrepreneurship as an institutional priority.

This class will have a service learning component to incorporate experiential learning. Students will go into the New Orleans public school system and work with students to better their writing and story telling skills. [like the neighborhood story project: http://www.neighborhoodstoryproject.org/] The class will also bring in various community members and local entrepreneurs to speak with students and share their stories of change. From neighborhood leaders to business leaders, the incorporation of community leaders will be valuable hands-on learning for students and also make them aware of the various problems within the New Orleans community. The general class will explore effective writing techniques as well as uses of media.

As a coalition including Hubs, Co.Spaces, P2PU, and universities, we are working to launch open, cross-university minor/majors and cross-city masters in changemaking this year. In the process, we are pulling together many existing building blocks- tools, resources, and organizing practices- both for our purposes and also for adoption and replication by others. Teams have formed to work on 1) creating flexible guidebooks for peer-led action-learning, 2) kick-off days and retreats for forming groups in communities, 3) going to Berlin with P2PU this summer to help develop tech tools and our community outreach strategy together, 4) starting a "living roadmap" interview project to help changemaker navigate many different paths in life, and more.

As a result of the Ashoka U Summit, BPUSA will be collaborating with Tulane, University of Virginia SEEDS Program and Ashoka Young Champion, Zubaida Bai, to assure that we reach our goal of sponsoring 50,000 AYZH SisterFriend Safe Birth Kits in 2012. SEEDS will help develop a business and marketing plan to reach student organizations and other people interesed in purchasing a Safe Birth Kit for a pregnant woman in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. A Safe Birth Kit costs the equivalent of a $5.00 cup of designer coffee. In addition to saving a woman's life, the Safe Birth Kits provide employment for the women in India who assemble them and $1.00 goes to BPUSA to administer our global projects.

Through this class, we hope to: 1) Introduce students to social entrepreneurs, innovators, and visionaries who are coming up with new methods of solving society’s problems, 2) Provide opportunities to engage in social innovation and changemaking on campus and in the community, 3) Enhance students' understanding of self and personal values, and 4) Help students understand the role of service in their personal and academic lives as change agents. Since attending the Ashoka U Exchange, we have identified a faculty member interested in co-teaching the course and have submitted the syllabus for approval. We would love to share our progress and lessons learned at the 2013 Exchange.

This program is interesting because it is based in the Amazon with a focus on sustainability and the environment. Students will study four modules of three weeks each plus have time for other travel throughout the country. They will be spending their time in the foundation’s “living laboratory” of 4,300 acres of rainforest. I was very pleased to see the strong interest in the semester abroad program from a number of people representing different universities throughout the US. Since my return to Ecuador, I have reached out to these universities plus there has been a Skype conference with different professors from a major university and one of their professors will come to visit Yachana in June to further explore the idea.